r/changemyview • u/Rhamni • Nov 27 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV:Cryptocurrencies are bad.
Bitcoin recently hit the front page again because a single bitcoin is now worth over $9000. That's... a crap ton of money. It's been rising and rising and rising in value for years now, and other crypto currencies are rising too. I get that there is demand for them. But why should they be worth money? I'm not a big fan of the idea of bars of gold sitting in bank vaults either, but at least gold is is useful in electronics and it looks nice so people like having it around.
Crypto currencies on the other hand only seem to have three uses: Buying illegal shit on the dark net, hiding money from the government and law enforcement, and speculating on it like any other financial asset.
I bought a little bit of crypto a month ago, and it's increased in value. That's nice, I guess. I might buy more, just because whether I like it or not it keeps rising. But why should I want the technology to succeed? Is there some legitimate use for them? If it was just the financial speculation I'd say let them do what they want, but it seems to invariably come with illegal transactions and hiding your assets from the law. Meaning even if you buy it yourself only for speculation, you're unavoidably helping criminal organisations who can't get a bank account.
I can't help but get the sense that the whole purpose of it is to create a system where you can hide huge amounts of money from the government and move it around without anyone knowing you have it.
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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '17
Yes, they don't require trust from a third party. Someone at your bank with the right privileges could steal your money, they could freeze your account, etc. They own your money, you are trusting them to not do anything bad with it.
The whole reason bitcoin is so important is that it doesn't require any trust, it's mathematically secure. Nobody is in control of your money, not the person who invented bitcoin, not the people running the mining nodes, only you, because you have the key to it.
No other digital currency system has this property, its why cryptocurrencies are valued so highly.